In what it anticipates to be a UK-first, EE is to activate a live 5G trial network in London’s Tech City during October 2018 through the upgrade of ten of its sites in East London.

The trial is being conducted in preparation for BT’s planned debut of the technology in late-2019 (BTwatch, #296), and is expected to deliver live mobile data speeds in excess of 1Gbps.

EE said it will use social media channels “in the coming weeks” to find participants for the 5G trial, comprising five small businesses and five homes, which will use prototype 5G broadband devices as part of the pilot.

At its recent results presentation, BT confirmed plans to launch 5G services within 18 months, putting a late-2019 debut on the cards (BTwatch, #296). The first iteration of 5G-branded services will not involve the more transformational elements of the new standard, with BT planning to offer enhanced mobile broadband as a first step.

In November 2017, EE trumpeted a successful demonstration of an end-to-end 5G test network at its UK labs, working in conjunction with vendor Huawei, recording download speeds of 2.8Gbps and sub-5 millisecond latency under laboratory conditions (BTwatch, #290)

BT defends early 5G launch plans

While BT was talking up its progress on 5G implementation, it was also forced to defend its plans to launch services by end-2019 (BTwatch, #296), and refuted other operators’ assertions that releases made prior to 2020 will be a watered-down, “5G Lite”, version of the technology.

Rivals have criticised EE’s focus on using emerging 5G standards to provide a boost to mobile data capacity, claiming that ‘true’ 5G services will not be available until standards body 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) finalises Release 16, which will enable full-blown, standalone 5G services and is scheduled for finalisation in December 2019.

EE responded to the criticism with claims that it expects 5G to evolve, and insisting that this is the usual course of events for new network technologies.

“4G also evolved from launch to where we are now – we launched with 10MHz of spectrum, and now many of our sites have 65MHz live. All generations of mobile technology evolve from launch – there’s nothing different about 5G in that respect, and there’s no need for confusing terms like ‘5G Lite’. We’ve always been clear to our technical audience that we’re launching with non-standalone 5G, based on 3GPP Release 15 Option 3. And we’ll be very clear with customers about the capabilities of our 5G at launch, and as we introduce new features that enable new experiences.” – EE.

In an interview with industry publication Total Telecom, Marc Allera, Chief Executive (CEO) of Consumer, was disparaging of the criticism, and said, “to be honest, I don’t know what they mean by that – it’s either 5G or it’s not 5G; there is no such thing as ‘5G Lite’”.

“I know what we mean by 5G – we mean getting the equipment out there, getting the spectrum out there, and getting the devices out there. With the experience we have of successfully launching 4G, we know that we are not going to be able to roll out 5G across the whole country on day one… There is twelve-18 months to go and there are still a lot of unknowns, particularly the devices. However, some of the big unknowns are no longer unknown. In terms of spectrum, you can now tick that box. The equipment vendors are obviously working very hard with everyone.” – Allera.

Meanwhile, rivals, including Telefónica UK (O2 UK) and Three UK, were vocal in their criticism of the non-standalone 5G services EE is planning to launch.

“Any UK operator launching ‘5G’ before 2020 would be using a ‘lite’ version of 5G. Everyone in the world (including O2 in the UK) is expected to deploy 5G using a ‘non-standalone’ architecture to start with, but it’s the ‘standalone’ version which comes after that will offer the complete 5G experience. Effectively, this means that a 5G launch before 2020 will lack certain capabilities (e.g. super low latency, vehicle communications for autonomous driving, enhanced security).” – O2 UK.

CK Hutchison-owned Three UK referred to EE’s plans as “nothing more than a PR exercise”, as the operator’s Chief Executive Dave Dyson outlined plans for a 5G launch in 2020.

While BT is pressing ahead with its 5G testbed this year, rival operator Three UK will be conducting 5G equipment testing during the first half of 2019, alongside a network overhaul replacing its signalling equipment across the UK. Emerging UK fibre player SSE Enterprise Telecoms (BTwatch, #287 and passim) is to prepare Three UK’s network core for 5G across 20 data centres, in a project that began in April 2018 as part of a “multi-million pound phased” agreement, which will also see SSE Enterprise Telecoms and Three UK unbundle BT exchanges in the coming years.